SlashGear Week in Review- Week 7 2011

Welcome to another edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! Before we get into the meat today, I want to note that SlashGear will be at MWC 2011 next week and you can get your MWC fix by following the "MWC 2011" tag. Monday Canon outted a pair of new DSLR cameras for the entry-level user called the T3i and the T3. The cameras have nice features, the T3i will sell for $899.99 in kit form, and the T3 will be $599.99 in kit form.

We also went hands on with the Nokia E7 smartphone Monday. We will give the full run down on the device in the review, but so far, Chris was disappointed. The eLocity 10-inch Android tablet is set to hit pre-order on February 15. The tablet is much like the 7-inch offering with a larger screen and a 4GB version will sell for $399 with the most expensive 64GB version at $699.99.

The price for the Motorola Xoom tablet surfaced early in the week and it's very far from cheap. The tablet will sell for about $800 and may well put the first Honeycomb tablet out of contention in the tablet market. The coolest commercial during the Super bowl last weekend was the VW one with the little Darth Vader. The kid behind the mask was unveiled early in the week as a 6-year old heart patient.

The first successful Jailbreak for the Verizon iPhone 4 was announced Monday. The jailbreak was done with Cydia on iOS 4.2.6 on the Verizon smartphone. HTC unveiled that it has purchased a $40 million stake in the streaming game service OnLive. HTC wants to stream games to smartphones, which sounds good to me.

Intel has resumed shipments of flawed 6 series chipset mainboards this week. The shipments are said to be at the request of vendors and the stipulation is that the machines be configured so that the affected SATA ports aren't used. We went hands-on with the cool dual-screen Kyocera Echo Tuesday at the official unveil. We though the phone felt well built even if aside from the dual screens it is a bit plain and some gestures aren’t supported.

The new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has told workers bluntly that it is "standing on a burning platform" with MeeGo. Elop's statements make it clear he doesn't believe in MeeGo. Smartphones outsold PCs for the first time according to IDC for Q4 2010. Smartphone sales jumped 87.2% to 53.9 million shipped.

An awesome Sony DSLR camera surfaced this week with a clear housing. The camera will never see production; it's just to show off the inner beauty of the DSLR. I would buy a clear camera like that though. AT&T announced a new change to its mobile plans that allows free unlimited calling to any mobile number in America. The plan is available for any user with a qualifying voice plan and unlimited messaging.

HP went official with the TouchPad tablet sporting webOS 3.0 mid-week. The tablet has a 9.7-inch screen, 1.2GHz processor, and more. Is it enough to battle the iPad though? We unboxed the Motorola Atrix 4G smartphone and spent some hands-on time with it. Initial impressions are that the phone is fast and we expect it to be a standout phone for the year.

Android finally beat Apple in smartphone share in the US according to IDC. In Q4 2010 Android had 28.7% of the US market and iOS had 25%. A twitter user tweeted the infamous PS3 hacking code to Sony's Kevin Butler and he had no clue what it was. Butler replied, "Lemme guess…you sank my Battleship?"

We spent a bit more time with the HP touchpad and caught our fondling on video. Are any of you really excited about this tablet? Another swell of Apple iPad 3 rumors surfaced Thursday with calls that the new tablet would hit this Fall. The rumors started from idle musings from Daring Fireball's John Gruber.

The Verizon iPhone 4 is in stores now and so far the response isn't what was expected. I figured there would be shortages, but it seems not that many folks were waiting to get the iPhone 4 on Verizon. Nokia is reportedly eyeing the purchase of boutique developers for its halo apps. Nokia is also said to be in talks with Adobe to co-create dev tools.

A 7-year-old boy tried to buy a real Harrier from an eBay auction. His dad found out about the $113,000 buy and cancelled the order, crushing childhood dreams. Don posted up a column Thursday that said Google TV is dying and Apple TV running apps will finish it. I think Google TV was done for when Hulu and other networks blocked the device from accessing their shows.

Nokia has announced that it will be using the Windows Phone 7 OS on some of its smartphones. Exactly when the Nokia devices with the WinPo 7 OS will show up is unknown. Rumors have surfaced that Apple is getting a smaller iPhone ready for the market. The device is said to be about a third smaller than the current iPhone and lack a home button with a target price of $200 sans contact.

Courts have ordered GeoHot to turn over the HDD of his computer to Sony. Sony is searching for evidence of the hacking of the PS3 on the HDD. I think most of us were hoping that Nokia would turn to Android and instead it went Windows Phone 7. Stephen Elop said that there were "too many players" in the Android market for Nokia.

Nokia is shedding works in hoards right now as it tries to shore things up for the long haul. Google is reaching out to the fired engineers and offering some of them jobs. Google's Aidan Biggins tweeted, "Any Nokia software engineers need a job?" Thanks for reading this week's edition, see you next time!